Highlights from Dave Winer's keynote at Gnomedex:

"To get a conference started, you have to sing the song." But we're having connectivity issues and so far, no singing.

Dave doesn't have a Net connection, but is here to do a demo. We're watching his sound recorder's level until he's online. Dave (and no doubt others; here's the del.icio.us audio feed) are podcasting this.

Some unconference logistics and guidelines ensue. Dave, as Chris Pirillo hands the shy and retiring Marc Canter the mic: "You don't hand him the mic, Chris!!"

Dave has Net! So, on with the demo. Shows the nifty and instant Weblog editing and RSS building aspects of his OPML editor.

Dave has no Net! So, discusses why the outliner is under the GPL. These kinds of structures that are editable by users are how we go forward with the Web. Dave doesn't think you could get the kind of development that you need with a commercial product. He tried, with Userland. This is going to try a different direction.

Discussion about how the editor works, how it will work with features not included in Scripting News, which was the context of the demo. It sounds like it's designed to work with whatever features the user wants. Idea is that the editor will have many applications; the Weblog editor aspect is about 24 hours old at the moment.

JD says that in addition to being from Ourmedia, he's from the acronym police. Dave says the name isn't restrictive. NetNewsWire isn't called RSS.

In answer to a question: RSS or OPML would be a great platform for building an interoperative calendar, with OPML probably being the richer environment.

Vision for OPML in the workplace: the key concept is narrating your work. You might revise your to-do list. You might see what's on your manager's list. You might see what the other people in your workgroup are doing. As a manager, Dave felt that people who were narrating their work were more organized and always able to tell you what was going on. In a virtual workgroup in particular, it's really hard as a manager to know what's going on, and this does it. How about read/unread items? Sociological and trust issues come into play there, but yes, you could set it up that way and there's additional information that will provide.

So, this has all been very interesting but still no song! I just couldn't let that sorry state of affairs continue. Yellow Submarine won out, be sure to grab the audio.

[Technorati tag: Gnomedex2005]